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42

STEFI

I n a week, Matteo—I tried calling him Dr. Ferrini but he wasn’t having it—is happy enough with my progress that he gives me permission to go downstairs. “It’s probably safe enough for you to meet Mimi as well,” he says in response to a long, plaintive yowl. “As long as Joao is supervising and stopping her from jumping on you.” He fixes me with a stern look. “Don’t pick her up, no lifting anything heavier than a kilo just yet.”

Leaving my makeshift hospital room cheers me up immensely, as does the shower that Matteo allows me to have. Joao insists on helping me with the latter task, and for a change, I don’t pretend I can manage on my own.

He makes me sit down on a chair in his shower stall while he washes me gently with a handheld shower, taking care to keep my wound dry. He massages shampoo and conditioner into my hair and rinses them out with warm water. The whole experience leaves me feeling unbelievably pampered.

And turned on. It doesn’t help that Joao is naked. It makes perfect sense as he’s in the shower with me, and it’s only practical for him to take off his clothes, but when I see his massive erection, my lizard brain immediately starts screaming for sex. Which Matteo refuses to let me have because it’ll interfere with my healing.

“You want me to take care of that?” I ask him hopefully as he smooths lotion into my skin. I keep forgetting that I’m annoyed with Joao for bringing me to Venice. “Matteo didn’t forbid me from going down on you.”

“That’s a tempting offer, but no, thank you. You need to heal, not get me off.”

“Why not both?”

“Not going to happen.”

“Since when did you get so rule-abiding?” I grumble. “I don’t like it.”

He laughs and kisses my forehead. “I have it on good authority that you love me.”

“Once again, throwing my own words back at me. Can I borrow one of your T-shirts? I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Right. About that.” He opens his dresser and pulls out what looks like three neatly folded blankets. “I bought you some warm and comfortable lounge sets.” He holds them up. “Pink, charcoal, or red?”

I’m incredibly touched. “Pink, please.” It’s a soft pastel pink that feels unbelievably cozy. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Joao.”

“You’re welcome, little fox.”

Once I’m dressed, Joao helps me down the stairs and into a plush leather recliner. Mimi promptly comes over to investigate. She sniffs my outstretched hand, then rubs her cheek against me, plops herself on my feet, and promptly takes a nap.

“Typical,” Joao murmurs in mock disgust. “I feed her and clean her litter, yet one look at you, and she’s glued to your side.”

“I didn’t take you to be a sore loser,” I tell him with a grin, and then my smile fades. As much as I want to stay here all afternoon, I’ve already been in Venice for a week, and I can’t avoid reality forever. If I’m well enough to get up and go downstairs, I’m well enough to confront the king of Venice. “I need to meet Antonio Moretti.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Joao replies. “He lives around the corner. Let me call him.”

He steps out of the room to make the phone call. “He’s coming over,” he says when he returns. “He said he’ll be here in fifteen minutes, give or take.”

“He’s coming here? I’m a little surprised. This guy runs the city but is willing to visit one of his underlings instead of having us visit his palazzo and kiss the ring?”

“Well, it’s not like you can walk to his house in your condition.” He fixes me with a serious look. “Can I trust that you won’t kill the padrino?”

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Are you planning on stopping me?”

“Yes,” he replies. “If you kill Antonio, you won’t make it out of Venice in one piece. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been trying very hard to keep you alive.”

Something tells me that if I attack Moretti, it won’t just be my life I’m risking. It’ll also be Joao’s, and that, I’m not going to do. “I won’t touch him. Am I allowed to yell at him, or do I have to treat him like he walks on water?”

He gives me a wry smile. “Yell all you want.”

“What, you’re not worried he’ll have me killed if I look at him the wrong way?” I ask snidely.

“No,” Joao replies calmly, refusing to be provoked. “I already told you—he’s guaranteed your safety.”

Lo and behold, fifteen minutes later, there’s a knock on the front door. Joao opens it, and Antonio Moretti enters the room.

He looks like his pictures. Dark hair, dark eyes, broad shoulders. Although, the photos don’t do a good job conveying the relaxed calm with which he holds himself. This is a man who’s comfortable with his place in the world and has no need to impress anyone.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” he says. “Lucia’s hosting a movie night. It’s one rom-com after another.” He turns to me and holds out his hand. “It’s good to meet you,” he says. “Matteo tells me you’re recovering well. I’m glad.”

“Are you?” I ask, my voice harsh. Joao winces at my tone, but I don’t care. I’m not physically attacking Moretti—that has to be good enough.

“Yes,” he says. He sits down across from me, and Mimi, the traitor, gets up from my feet and jumps onto his lap. “But I get the sense I’m missing something.”

“Fifteen million somethings,” I bite out. “Did you really think you could hide your yearly payments to Henrik Bach?”

A look of shock flashes over Moretti’s face. “Fuck,” he swears, running his hands through his hair and looking deeply discomfited. “You weren’t supposed to find out about those.”

Joao’s head snaps toward his boss. “You really paid Bach?” he asks, sounding betrayed. “After everything I told you about that psychopath, after the dossier Valentina compiled on him, you still funded his operation? Why?”

The mafia head looks at me and then Joao. “I would have preferred you never find out. But what’s done is done.” He exhales in a long sigh. “Six months after Joao came to Venice, the first bounty hunter showed up. Bach really didn’t like when his assassins tried to escape, and he was determined to get Joao back.”

He leans back in the chair and absently pats Mimi’s head. “Leo, my enforcer, foiled the attempt, of course, but it didn’t stop there. Four more bounty hunters came to Venice that year.”

I have a very bad feeling about this story.

“They weren’t very good,” Moretti continues. “Bach was willing to pay a million euros for your recovery, and that kind of money brings a lot of people out of the woodwork. But the truly competent bounty hunters—people like Varek Zaworski and Pavel Dachev—stayed away. They knew better than to abduct someone from Venice.” He gives me a very dry look. “It’s generally considered a bad idea to make an enemy out of me.”

“Touché.”

“We sent the first dozen bounty hunters back in body bags before Bach upped his offer by half a million. We killed another six, and it became two million. In the meantime, I had to keep Joao in Venice. Inside my city, I could protect him. Outside? There were no guarantees.”

“I can protect myself,” Joao says, his voice hard.

“It was too risky,” Antonio counters. “If one of them got lucky. . . No. I wasn’t going to gamble with your life. But at the same time, I couldn’t keep you in Venice forever. It would have been like trading one prison for another. The situation wasn’t tenable. I knew it, and Bach knew it too, which is why he called me. He said he could keep sending his bounty hunters, and one of them would eventually get through because we couldn’t kill them all. I told him to go to hell. Then he warned me that he wasn’t going to stop trying, and when he ran out of bounty hunters, he was going to order his trainees to step in.”

My throat goes dry. If Joao knew who Bach sent to bring him in, he wouldn’t shoot back. We all went through hell. I don’t know if any one of us could kill our own.

“You were a valuable employee, Joao,” Moretti continues. “But it was more than that. My childhood was nowhere as difficult as yours, but we both grew up in difficult circumstances, and I’ve always felt a sense of kinship with you. Bach was setting you up for a choice that would tear you apart. I didn’t want that to happen.”

“So, instead, you gave in to Henrik’s blackmail,” Joao says tonelessly. “You paid him off.”

I can’t say anything. All my anger, all my recrimination, suddenly drains away to nothing. Antonio Moretti’s money kept Joao alive. How can I hate him for it?

I’m a hypocrite, the worst sort of hypocrite in the world. For all that I accused Joao of looking the other way and tolerating the lesser evil for my safety, I’m doing the same thing. I don’t want to rail against Moretti for what he did—I want to thank him.

“Not happily,” Antonio replies. “It was a stopgap measure, one that bought me time. As soon as I paid Bach off, I put a plan into action. For the last five years, I’ve been working on ruining him financially. I’ve had to proceed slowly and carefully, not letting anything be traced back to me for fear that it might endanger Joao, but I wasn’t going to rest until Bach’s empire was destroyed.”

He glances at me. “I have many projects on the go,” he says. “I didn’t know about your existence until Cici sent me her intel, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized what you were doing. But you and I have the same goal.”

“It appears we do,” I mutter. I know I sound ungracious, but in my defense, Antonio Moretti has been on my list for five years. I’m having difficulty thinking of him as anything other than an enemy.

But it turns out I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Moretti set out to ruin Bach; that’s why he’s been weaker these last few years. And I know I couldn’t have taken out as much of Bach’s network as I did if it had been operating at full strength.

Antonio gives me a half-smile. “I’ve also heard I’m on your hitlist.”

My gaze flies to Joao, and Antonio shakes his head. “No, Joao didn’t tell me. He said that you freaked out when you found out he worked for me. There was really only one reason you’d have that reaction, and that’s if you found out I was paying off Bach.”

I clear my throat. “You’re no longer on the list; you should have never been on it in the first place. I didn’t understand what you were doing.” I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that.”

He shakes his head. “No apologies needed,” he says. “And about Alina. . . I wasn’t thrilled about your attempt to kidnap her, but given the extenuating circumstances there, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.”

Joao looks discomfited, though not for the reason I think. “Padrino, about the money. I?—”

The mafia boss holds up his hand. “And this is why I didn’t want you to find out. If it makes you feel better, Joao, I’ve made more money destroying Bach’s business than what I paid him. Please let’s not discuss it again.” He phrases it as a request, but it’s definitely an order. He turns back to me. “Let’s get back to business. Who’s left on your list?”

“Just one person. Pavel Dachev.”

He grimaces. “A hard target. Your gunshot wound hasn’t dissuaded you from trying to take him out?”

Antonio Moretti doesn’t know about the promise I made at Christopher’s grave. “No. I won’t stop until I’m done.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Dachev is scum, but for all kinds of complicated reasons, I can’t be seen taking him out.” His smile is vicious. “What the two of you do, on the other hand, is up to you. He tends to be a hard person to find. I’ll ask Valentina to help you.” He gets up to leave. “If anyone can track him down, it’s her.”

“Thank you.”

All this time, I’ve thought of Moretti as the enemy, a man standing in the way of Joao and my happiness. But he’s not. Moretti might be ruthless, but he’s also deeply protective of his people, a man who not only values loyalty, but also offers it to his people.

And I’m glad, so glad. All this time, I’ve hated the idea that I’d be tearing Joao’s life apart when I killed Moretti. I’ve hated the idea that I’m making him choose between me and the life he’s built here.

And now he doesn’t have to.

Joao walks Antonio out and then comes back inside with a grin on his face. “What?” I ask, my cheeks flaming at the knowing look on his face. “If you’re going to say, ‘I told you so,’ then let me warn you that being cocky isn’t attractive.”

He laughs. “Oh, I think you love when I’m cocky. But I wasn’t going to rub your nose in it. I’m just thinking that we’re in the city of your dreams, and there’s still a few hours of daylight left. Matteo grudgingly agreed that as long as you stayed off your feet and didn’t go anywhere too crowded, it was safe enough to go out. If you’re very nice to me, we could go out in my boat for an hour. Cruise the Grand Canal, see the Ponte di Rialto?—”

“You have a boat?” I blurt out.

“Of course.”

“How nice do I have to be?” I flutter my eyelashes at him and make my best come-hither face.

Joao gives me a stern look. “Not that nice,” he says. “Get your mind out of the gutter. You just got shot. Matteo hasn’t cleared you for sex.”

“You don’t want me?” I pout.

“Stefi, there’s never a moment that goes by when I don’t want you. But I care far more about your health than the state of my cock.” He sweeps me into his arms, and I bite back a squeal of surprise. “Now, shall we go? Venice awaits, my lady.”